Precarious Figurations

Shakespeare¿s Shylock plays a precarious role on the 20th-century German stage. The work examines the contradictory meanings attributed to this Jewish character before, during and after the Holocaust, in the GDR, the Fed. Republic, and in the reunified Germany. It explores the complexity of the figure, which can be used both to convey and to question anti-Semitism, both to muffle the cultural consciousness of the Holocaust, and to keep it acute.